One piece of the pie of trying to get things done in Nicaragua is the fact that a lot of times, there just is never enough of what you need. Articles about doing business in Nicaragua which I have seen (1) (2) highlight legal aspects, infrastructure, political situation, real estate, but they don’t talk about purchasing.

Below is a picture of Mario chatting with a man at a store where we were buying switches and wire.

Stores keep inventories low because in Nicaragua people don’t buy as much as they do in the US – or any other country I have seen for that matter. Since we are here attempting to find some of the parts we need to build solar lamps, this has been really frustrating. It’s not like you can go to Fleet Farm and buy 20 roles of tape if you need them – you have to go to 10 different stores and buy 2 rolls of tape at each store. We ran into this problem with AAA battery holders this past Friday…it turns out there are only about three of them in the whole country and they need to be shipped in from Costa Rica which takes a week or two. I suppose it’s possible there are more and we will find out one way or another whether there are or whether we have to make them!